


Antarctica

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [13]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Fight Flirting, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, M/M, Non-Human Courting Practices, One Shot, One-Sided Attraction, Rodan's Not A Bitch, Slow Burn, this is important enough to warrant its own tag, violence as romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-17 06:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Rodan doesn't feel about them; and now, Ghidorah thinks they'd better leave the planet before they get too attached to let go.Rodan strenuously disagrees. And he's determined to change Ghidorah's mind—by tooth and nail, if necessary.
Relationships: King Ghidorah/Rodan
Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476800
Comments: 6
Kudos: 100





	Antarctica

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 9.
> 
> This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is: Ghidorah (mainly Ichi) developed the crush first and Rodan doesn't quite reciprocate yet; Rodan isn't sure what the hell Ghidorah is but certainly doesn't know he's an alien; nobody goes by the names that humans assigned their species but Rodan goes by "Nido"; and Ghidorah is a mild empath (telepathically reads/projects emotions) but needs to make head contact for it to work.
> 
> This is one of a small handful of fics I'm proudest of so far among my KOTM writing. Of what I've written so far, this one does the best job of showing the psychology of Rodan & Ghidorah's relationship.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It had already been night when they'd left the red sprite's island; but it felt like the farther south they went, the darker it got. Their storm changed from hot furious rain to frozen icy daggers, stinging their eyes and wings. They were so cold.

What were they doing on this rotten planet, fawning over that stupid little creature? They couldn't even speak to each other. He was afraid of their touch. _They didn't even want him to know how they felt about him_.

Wasn't that true? They didn't want him to know. He'd _found out_—and they hated it. They hadn't wanted him to know. That _was_ true. So what was the point of staying around just because they were infatuated with him, if they hadn’t even wanted him to figure it out? What was the _point_, First? Why were they here?!

It was hard to see through the storm. They couldn't focus. Their vision was distorted, everything repeating, like crossed eyes but not quite. Triple vision. Second's rage and First's shame and Third's rising panic felt like claws digging into the stitched-together flesh between their necks, tearing them apart from each other.

_The red sprite didn't love them._

So why were they here?

First didn't know. He was being so stupid. Maybe they should leave.

Third's terror stabbed into their scars. No! They couldn't leave now! Not when they'd finally decided to stay somewhere for the _first time_ in their _lives!_ They'd only been here _half a month_—a half month break from millennia upon millennia upon millennia of wandering frozen and cold through space—he wasn't ready to give up sunsets and sands and scents yet, he didn't want to go, _he didn't want to go_.

Rage flowed back and forth between their minds like tides rising and lowering across the world. Second's rage vanished in the face of Third's plea; and First's towered up in its place. That was too bad, wasn't it, that he didn't want to go. First couldn't say he wanted to go either. No, he'd far prefer to stay here and—and have some kind of—romantic, fantastic, fantasy life with the red sprite. But that wasn't happening, was it! The key word here was _fantasy!_ They were lucky enough that he'd let them stay on his island—probably only because they'd beaten him once and then he'd gotten injured—but the delusional dream of making a happy little aerie had been bound to fall apart eventually, and whatever delusion _Third_ was carrying about what their life could be like on this world was going to fall apart too, and _he needed to deal with that_. They all needed to deal with that.

They all, always, needed to deal with that.

Third lunged for Second's neck; Second lunged for Third's. One of them had meant to go for First, or else one of them was making the attack that First had meant to make. They'd lost track of who was arguing what, they were almost losing track of their _own_ positions. Their scars burned. They were all furious and all afraid.

They plummeted then leveled out.

What would they have if they stayed here? Look at them after only half a month, tearing at their own throats. They were going to kill themselves. This was why they always moved on, this was why they refused to get attached: because _this_ was what they were afraid would happen. And they'd never even imagined it would be this bad. They'd never thought it would happen so fast. They never though the grief could start _before_ they lost whatever they let themselves get attached to. But here it was, anyway.

The red sprite didn't love them.

###

Nido had never been this cold in his life.

He rarely ever flew this close to the hubs of the world—even more rarely to the left hub, where the land petered out much sooner and there were no volcanoes. Just water and ice. Water and ice and darkness.

The golden one's storm tore at Nido's wings like icy daggers. He could feel his armor softening in the rain and crumbling off of him as he flew, and frozen crystals filling the cracks.

Nido cried for the golden one, but he didn't answer. Nido didn't know if the golden one could still hear him; most of the time, Nido couldn't even see him. Occasionally he caught a far-away glimpse of him, illuminated by his lightning; his heads twisted and writhed around each other, seemingly fighting himself still. But the glimpses got smaller each time.

He'd had no idea the golden one could fly so fast. It was hard to tell, with Nido being shoved back and forth by the storm winds while the wind undoubtedly served to push the golden one faster—but he might even be faster than Nido. He was falling far behind.

He kept following anyway. Even if he couldn't see the golden one anymore, by now he was confident of his route: he was flying all the way to the left hub, the axle around which the world turned.

Nido would find him there or freeze to death trying.

###

Their legs gave out under them as they landed, and they dropped to their knees in the snow. Their blizzard whipped through the night, cold and black and white and ashen; and it reminded them too much of the moon where they had been made.

It made them furious.

Here was the hole in the ground where the little king had buried them; here were the ruined buildings and aircraft they'd left scattered behind them as they left. How long had they been buried in this frozen hell, they wondered? It seemed a fitting place to leave this world behind.

Between their recent frantic dance at the edge of the atmosphere, their struggle to disrupt a hurricane, and their hard flight today to the bottom of the world, they were sore and tired. Hardly the condition they were usually in when they left behind a planet behind—usually, the world was flattened and barren, and they had taken time to recover their strength before leaving.

It galled them to leave this world while it was still alive. But the red sprite merited that much of a mercy.

A needle pierced their heart.

No. It had to be now. While they were still resolved to go. Their necks were raw and missing scales; they could taste their own blood. But they'd reached a consensus. This infatuation was stupid—and they were stupid to stay just to _pine_ for him if he didn't want them as much as they wanted him.

And he didn't want them. No. He'd proven that when he'd _shoved his mind_ up against First's, stolen the knowledge of their affection—and they'd had a chance to see what was inside Nido's head. Eager curiosity, fascination, trepidation-quickly-turning-to-relief—something like satisfaction. Something like _smugness_.

He felt they were threatening, but interesting.

Interesting.

That was all.

They were not going to stay on his island to be a curiosity for him.

They raised their wings, stretched so high that they trembled and shook, both from the strain and the cold—tensing up for a beat of their wings that would carry them halfway out of the atmosphere.

Through the howling wind, they thought they heard something that sounded, faintly, like the cry of the red sprite's name—the way he heralded his approach.

They froze.

No, they had to have imagined the sound. It was wishful thinking. It was just the sound of the knot in First's throat tightening. They took a deep breath in—the last breath they might take for millennia—and shut their eyes.

The red sprite slammed into their side.

They toppled to the ground in a mess of flailing wings and squawks.

###

Nido somehow got his head stuck under the golden one's wing, so he was quite grateful when the golden one managed to get one of his tails curled around to smack Nido free. He tumbled into the snow, almost ended up stuck upside-down on his own shoulders with his horns stuck in the ice, but managed to flail until he'd flopped onto his back and could get back to his feet.

The golden one took longer to get up—but, Nido supposed, he had more parts to coordinate. Twisted half on his side and half on his back, one wing stuck under him and one in the air, feet kicking at nothing and necks akimbo. Nido hadn't quite figured out how to read his expressions from his faces just yet, but he was pretty sure that the thrice-repeated expression they were wearing was _shock_.

Shock—but then it quickly gave way to some mix of terror, confusion, and outrage, the expressions bouncing between his faces.

Nido shook himself, trying to get off as much snow as he could—futile effort, yeah—and by the time he'd decided he'd done as much with that lost cause as he could, the golden one was on his feet again. Two heads jerked forward with the middle curled back, hunched low on feet and wings, staring at him.

"Hey," Nido said, wings raised, far more cheerily than he felt.

"What." The golden one snapped the word out of one head while another hissed threateningly. He couldn't tell if they were angry or nervous.

"Ah." Yes, right, he should... he should say something. He hadn't actually planned what he would say when he reached this point. He poked his beak through the snow, couldn't find a rock to pick up, so instead just picked up a chunk of snow and flung it vaguely north. "Nest," he said.

The snow immediately blew back into his face. Honestly, it didn't add much to the blizzard.

"Nest," the golden one repeated dubiously.

"Fly nest!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"_No._" The three heads snarled it together, cacophonously and discordantly, lunging toward Nido as though threatening to strike. He tensed up, but he refused to flinch back or move away.

"Why?" he asked.

"‘Why’," the golden one repeated flatly. Nido hadn't taught him that word yet. How do you explain the definition of "why"?

He didn't know how else to convey what he wanted to ask, though. Why was the golden one leaving? What had Nido done wrong that was so awful that he'd rather _be down here_ than in a nice proper warm volcano? Surely this wasn't where his true nest was! There were no decent volcanos at the hub of the world! He looked around, wings spread demonstratively at this icy hellscape, showing that there was _nothing here_ worth—

Oh. Oh, that was—there was a hole in the ground. It was as miserable and frigid as the rest of the hub, but it was the right shape and size to be a nest. Was this— He'd wondered for some time whether the golden one had been born from a volcano that had gone cold before his egg had finished incubating. But this hole in the ice was so much _worse_. He hopped closer to the hole, studying it in horror.

Even through the blizzard, he could tell that the hole was just large enough to hold the golden one.

"Nest?" he asked, looking at the hole. "Golden one nest?"

The golden one didn't make a sound.

Nido looked at him—he was seething with rage, teeth bore, shoulders hunched, wings slowly raising in threat. Nido tumbled back just in time to avoid the golden one as he pounced, sliding between Nido and the nest. Had Nido gotten too close to his turf? Was he not welcome there? After how welcome the golden one had made himself at Nido's nest? If the golden one had been one of Nido's kind, Nido would _know_ how to handle this situation, he'd have known not to get this close to the nest of someone he'd lost a fight to without an invitation, but dammit, the golden one sent so many mixed signals—following a loser home to his nest instead of leading him to the winner's nest, touching him like they'd mated a hundred times and like he wanted to eat him at the same time—Nido had no idea how he was supposed to read any signals he gave off anymore—

Nido stared, now even more confused.

The golden one wasn't defending his nest.

He was tearing it apart.

###

Damn the little king, the vile stupid creature who had fought for the machine makers before they'd even made machines, the dumb beast that didn't know they were going to shackle him and make him their war machine if he didn't kill them first, the dumb beast even now already enthralled by the bug.

Damn the bug that pried into their heads with sharp psychic fingers, seeking to needle into their memories and suck out their identities through her proboscis, like their history and pain and all the names they'd left behind were nectar for her to feed on.

Damn the machine makers that had found their prison and turned it into a lab, an art gallery, a tourist attraction, just a display where they could stare at them through the ice like they, living frozen creature, breathing frozen creature, were a mere statue.

Damn this cold black-and-white ashen wasteland with its cold metal and glass buildings that looked like the arid airless moon where three hatchlings had been ripped apart and stitched together into a monster and forced to learn to fly.

Damn the red sprite for following them like he cared, and for seeing so easily that this was the kind of hell they'd come from.

The hole was buried under ice now—along with every evidence of machine maker life he could sweep down into it. They wondered if any had still been living down here. They hoped so. See how the machine makers liked being frozen alive while an alien stood above and did nothing to help them.

Then they rounded furiously on the red sprite.

He looked so pathetic. (Third, numbly resigning himself to the inevitability of numbing space, distant and observationally: _he looked so pathetic_. Second, sneering and snarling and demeaning and disgusted: _he looked so pathetic_. First, aching with agony for him, fearing for his health and safety: _he looked so pathetic_.) Half of his magma armor was cracked and crumbled—he looked like an oversized hatchling going through an ugly molt. Ice lined the cracks. They thought they could see exposed, wrinkled skin beneath the rock. He was shaking from the cold.

This was the creature who just yesterday had gone to sulk in a volcano because it was lightly misting. And look at him now—absurdly, having followed them almost all the way to the south pole, shivering so hard he was shaking off his own armor!

... Followed them into a blizzard of their own making, to ask them to come back home.

Why?

"What?" they snarled again, demanding an explanation, haltingly, in the few words they knew: "What Nido—fly—near? What Nido fly near Gidiwi?" Why? Why?

He stared at them for a moment, and they were afraid he hadn't understood the question—that they'd just spat gibberish at him. But then he said, "Nido, Gidiwi—" and a new word. He hopped on one leg, clawing and biting at the air with his other foot, making a couple of false battle cries—then looked at them hopefully and repeated the word.

The little pantomime was so—so _charming_—First had to force himself to look away. "Aha," they said softly. "Fight."

"Yes! Nido, Gidiwi fight. Nido—" He spread his wings and flopped backward to the ground, sending massive puffs of snow up around him, simulating his own crash into the ocean, and said another word that they took to mean _lose_. "Nido lose," he repeated. "Gidiwi fly, Nido fly. Gidiwi nest, Nido nest. Gidiwi fight, Nido fight. Gidiwi east, Nido east. Gidiwi west, Nido west. Yes?"

He was following them.

He was following them because he'd lost to them.

Not because he wanted to. Not even because he found them interesting. But because he'd lost. This ugly little world and all its rituals and rote etiquette, the bowing at the end of battles, bow and scrape and you won't be killed—and follow the winner, too, was that it? He did it because he had to?

No. He hadn't followed them to ask them to come home. He'd followed them because he thought he had to.

That island _wasn't_ their home. That wasn't their nest, this wasn't their mate, and this wasn't love. He didn't love them. He'd do whatever they forced him to, no doubt—but they would know he did it out of fear and duty. _He didn't love them_.

They had no ties to him.

And they were going to leave.

They _had_ to leave.

###

For a moment, Nido had almost been afraid that the golden one was going to attack him. Not that he wasn't always down for a brawl—but he could feel himself losing his armor; and a hi-how-ya-doing fight was very different from a you'll-never-trespass-in-my-territory-again brawl.

But then the madness in the golden one's eyes abated, and he looked away from Nido.

"Gidiwi fly far," he said. "Nido nest. Gidiwi no nest."

No nest. No Nido's nest or no _any_ nest? "Golden one fly where?"

"Where," the golden one said dully. Another word he hadn't learned.

"Wh—what? Fly what?" Why did they have so few words?!

He turned over the question for a moment—a bit long for Nido's tastes, considering the weather that he'd like an excuse to get out of—then said, "Up."

"Up." Up, what did he mean up. Surely he didn't mean up as in towards the sky—_obviously_ you have to go up when you're flying, but that says nothing about where you're going after that. Did he mean up as in west? There was no west from the hub. Did he mean west from the perspective of Nido's nest? He pointed in a vaguely northwestish direction, and asked, "Up?"

"_Up_." He pointed his heads straight up toward the sky.

So that _was_ what he'd meant. Somewhat irritated, Nido said, "Yes. Fly up, fly down. _Where?_"

"_Ihi_. Where." He got the word now. He lowered his heads slowly, and each one said, with increasing emphasis, "Up—up—_up_. No down."

What, did he plan on staying in the sky the rest of his life. Nido spread his wings wide. "What."

"Sun, far far far. Yes?" When he said "far" it still sounded more like "fire." "Gidiwi fly far far far, _far far far_."

Nido felt a chill in his bones that had nothing to do with the blizzard. He understood now. The golden one was leaving the planet completely. The golden one was flying up to outer space.

And certainly, Nido would never see him again if he did.

"No!" he roared. He'd barely started to get to know the golden one—he'd only just gotten used to having him in his home. He _wanted_ to get to know him. He wanted _so much_ to get to know him, this strange three-headed golden warrior, this enigma shaped half like Nido and half like the kind of underwater monster that would eat Nido, this, this—

This _alien_.

Was that what he was?

"No," Nido said again. "No fly. _Here_." A word he'd never taught the golden one. "Not far, not near—_here_." He bent, picked up a clump of snow, and dropped it straight back between his feet. "Here."

"No."

What had Nido done wrong?! All he'd wanted was to figure out how the golden one felt about him—was that an unforgivable insult?! Were aliens not allowed to find out each other's feelings?! Why were they build with feeling-transmitting spots on their foreheads if they weren't allowed to find out each other's feelings! "_Please_ stay," Nido said, "I'm sorry! I don't know why you want to leave, but I'm sorry!"

And of course the golden one didn't understand. He stared at Nido for a long moment—with pity? with sadness? with anger?—then turned away from Nihimdo, one head at a time, and crawled away into the storm.

Nido hopped after him, still pleading uselessly: "We fought. You _won_. I met your challenge. That means I follow you now and it means you—you—you should _want_ to be followed. That means we're—we're suppose to get to know each other! We're supposed to be—sparring and exploring the world and finding empty nests, and eventually, if we like each other enough, we're supposed to be mates—and you're already _way_ over that threshold for liking me enough, so I don't—I don't know what the problem is! I don't know what I did wrong! I— Are you an _alien?_ What is it an alien _wants?_ What were you expecting? How do I give it to you?"

"Stop." The golden one turned his heads away every time Nido tried to hop into his view.

"No! _You_ stop! Stop trying to leave! I don't even know what I did wrong! If you just show me—"

"_Stop_." The golden one flung his wings out, startling Nido back. But he wasn't trying to knock him away; he was lifting them high, preparing to do that _thing_ he'd done yesterday when he's shot into the sky with one flap.

He said something Nido couldn't understand. Nido heard the word that the golden one had called him, once, before Nido had told him what his real name was. He was afraid that what he was hearing was a goodbye.

He stood there helplessly as the golden one stretched his thin wings toward the sky and planted his feet wide so that the hurricane didn't blow him over. The words they both knew were useless, the words that might help were ones the golden one didn't know. What else could Nido do?

He stared at the golden one.

And then he tackled him.

###

They were not expecting a frigid pile of volcanic roc to slam its full weight into their side.

They went down hard, First and Second's faces slamming into the ice. Third lifted up first, shook his head to reorient himself, and shrieked furiously at the red sprite. By the time they'd righted themselves, the red sprite was high above, almost vanishing in the blizzard, circling like a bird of prey eyeing its next meal.

What the hell did he want? What difference did it make to him if they left?! Were they going to have to rip him apart to leave?

So be it.

They lifted into the air with a crackle of lightning between their wings. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Where. Was. He.

They didn't need to search long. With a screech, he came for them, talons outstretched. The flames trailing from his wings had long been extinguished, but they still felt his heat long before he touched them. They parried him with one foot, and he wheeled away, disappearing once more into the dark and the storm. Another cry, and he attacked again. They almost got their claws around him this time, but he stabbed at their ankles with his beak, plummeted out of their grip, then twisted around and flew off into the dark again. A third time he cried and attacked, coming at them from the side; but the angle wasn't right for him to get his talons in, and he barely touched their wing before wheeling off to try again.

His attacks were weaker than the first time they'd fought. Did the cold affect him that much? Or was he still feeble from his fight with the bug? Pathetic. They'd thought he'd made a full recovery, but—

Talons pierced their back.

They shrieked, as much in surprise as in pain. He'd dropped on them from above. He hadn't cried out before attacking—they hadn't even realized they'd been listening for that until his silent attack. Clever animal! They writhed beneath him, trying to throw him off and keep flying at the same time.

The red sprite held on ferociously, one set of talons digging into the muscles around Second's spine, the other sunken deep into the meat of their left shoulder. Every flap was agony. They curled their tails backwards, whipping them across his back; but he dropped his head into the sunken groove between Third and Second's spines for protection and took the beatings with muffled caws and flinches. They could feel the thorns of their tails' rattles snapping off against his armor.

The talons around his spine hurt too much for Second to do more than hold his head stiff, squeeze his eyes shut, and hiss; so Third twisted around, lightning dancing around his snarling jaw, trying to aim over their shoulders. The red sprite lunged forward and snapped his beak around Third's neck—hell, was the inside of his mouth _barbed?!_ Third snarled, his lightning dissipating into static, unable to get in a good shot without risking the tip of the red sprite's beak piercing through his throat.

If First hunched his neck back, his face was even with the red sprite's. He could even look him in the eye. The red sprite had to stretch himself out diagonally across their back in order to grip Third's neck without letting go with his talons. His throat was stretched out and exposed. All First had to do was snap his jaw shut around his vulnerable neck and this would be over.

He didn't.

He couldn't.

He looked into the red sprite's eye—into his bizarre alien animal mania—and he couldn't.

Two voices screamed in his head for him to bite, and he couldn't.

Instead, he twisted further and sank his teeth into the red sprite's shoulder. The red sprite shrieked, let go of Third's neck, and bit for First's instead.

And as he did, the side of his head brushed just close enough to the side of First's that First could hear his...

_Euphoria_.

The surprise of it nearly knocked them out of the air. The red sprite was euphoric. Breathlessly ecstatic. They were trying to kill him and he was having the best time of his life.

Yes, beneath the euphoria, there was fear in him—but it wasn't fear of death. It wasn't fear of losing, and it wasn't fear of _them_. It was the same fear that was driving them to leave: the fear that he might soon have to grieve for something he had lost. Was it them?

Strange, how strange—they thought the way to avoid grieving for something lost was to have nothing to lose. Instead he was... trying to avoid losing it.

He didn't adore them the way they adored him. But he wanted to fight them as badly as they wanted to hold him; he got the same heady rush they did. His heart pounded the same way. He didn't want them the exact same way that they wanted him, no, but, when they were fighting—he wanted them just as much.

_Exactly_ as much.

They crashed to the ground.

They'd been too stunned to remember to keep flapping for, perhaps, the length of only two flaps; but it was enough to drop them out of the sky. Hah. _Stupid_. They must have already been dangerously near the ground without noticing.

The landing had dislodged the red sprite's beak. With some difficulty, they managed to roll onto their back, squashing him beneath them. He squawked indignantly, trying to push them off of him with his feet. His talons didn't stab so much as lightly prick.

With even more difficulty, they rolled off of him, getting to their feet and wings. Before he could get off of his back and on his feet, they slammed down over him, wings on either side of his wings, feet on either side of his feet, heads looming over his head. He stared up at them with wide eyes, feet curled up in the narrow gap between his abdomen and theirs. "We're not staying," they hissed, tongues thick and unwieldy in their mouths, not sure which language they were speaking but sure it wasn't his. "Even if you think you have to follow us. Even if you think you like fighting us. We were stupid to ever consider staying on an alien world. We won't kill you—that's our favor to you—so do yourself a favor and stay—"

He rolled on one side, pushed himself off the ground with his wings, and with talons and beak tore through one of their wing membranes.

Searing pain. Their eyes widened. They dropped heavily onto their injured side, their wing collapsing in the snow. The red sprite scooted out from beneath them like he was doing a backstroke through the snow, rolled over, shook himself off, and drew himself upright.

They stared up at him, too shocked to register their pain.

"Gidiwi lose," he said firmly. "Gidiwi stop."

He'd clipped their wing.

###

Nido immediately regretted everything.

He kept himself drawn up tall—he couldn't falter now, he'd just _won_—but he was fairly certain that he was about to die.

He hadn't meant to shred that wing as thoroughly as he had. He'd meant to leave a light gash—something that would inconvenience the golden one if he tried to fly away, but something that would heal easily and let him depart in a few days if he really, truly, desperately wanted to leave. He'd wanted to show the golden one that he wanted him to stay the same way he'd show any of his own kind.

But the golden one wasn't one of his own kind. The golden one wasn't one of his own _planet_. And even on _this_ planet those that weren't of his kind didn't treat battle nearly as lightly as Nido did.

Now Nido had given him a much worse tear than he'd meant to, and he didn't know if the golden one _could_ heal from that—what if he couldn't fly anymore?!—and—

And the golden one was definitely going to kill him.

Nido stood there, raised up to his full height like an idiot, staring down at the three faces staring dumbstruck up at him, sure he was going to get electrocuted at any moment, and he'd probably deserve it.

Slowly, the golden one began pushing himself upright. Nido stayed perfectly still, watching as the golden one got back on his feet and uninjured wing—and then, with a lurch, as he raised up onto his feet, lifting both wings high overhead, not like he was preparing to take off but so that they framed his face, all three necks raised high between them, a clear threat display. Dark blood oozed slowly from the shredded segment of his wing, five haphazard gashes that tore straight through the membrane and let the blizzard blow through.

Nido stared up at him in dread.

And then the wings and heads dropped toward him all in a rush, so suddenly that he recoiled. It took him a moment to realize that the golden one wasn't attacking him. His long wings were dropped to the ground; his heads were lowered just below Nido's. He was bowing.

He was yielding.

"Gidiwi lose," he agreed. "Gidiwi stop."

Oh. Oh, Nido hadn't—hadn't honestly thought that that would _work_.

Did that mean he was the one deciding what they did, now? He supposed so. Hm. Were they... _supposed_ to be able to switch places like this?

Yeah. That sounded right, now that he thought about it. Some instinct said trading places was alright.

Tentatively, he said, "Good."

Then squawked when the golden one swept his uninjured wing around Nido, pulling him in close—for the length of one very fast heartbeat, he was sure that he was going to be crushed and eaten. The golden one was making a rumbling noise low in his chest that Nido didn't like the sound of at all.

But then he pressed two of his heads to Nido's—his middle forehead pressed to Nido's forehead, his left rubbing their cheeks together—and he was filled until he was dizzy with a cacophonous mix of adoration-infatuation-veneration and joy-relief-delight. The golden one’s right head snapped vaguely toward the other two; his left head snapped back before returning to enthusiastically nuzzling Nido's head.

He couldn't quite feel his own relief as separate from the golden one's—he just felt the both together, mingled and magnified.

The golden one had always seemed cold—but he was definitely warmer than the blizzard. And with the euphoric affection pouring into his head, he felt far less like he was being constricted and far more like he was being shielded from the storm.

He let his eyes sink shut, and he sagged against the golden one, relieved.

###

They were wanted.

They were wanted enough that the red sprite was willing to risk his life fighting to keep them. They were wanted enough that the red sprite would—in whatever ritualized regimented manner they had on this planet—fight his way out of being their follower, in order to make them his. They were wanted enough that he'd physically _ground them_ to keep them from leaving.

And they knew very little about how love worked—for them, for him, for anyone anywhere—but if clipping someone's wings so they couldn't fly away wasn't an act of, if not love itself, then at least a form of desire equal to it—then what _was_ an act of love?

Pulling the red sprite in close had startled him again; but his alarm had quickly disappeared when they'd showed him what they were feeling. (And they _could_ show him what they were feeling! There was no longer a secret they had to hide!) Now, he just felt a sort of weary relief—and what they were sure was a glimmer of affection to echo their own.

First and Third wrapped around him, and they curled their wing tighter. They could stay. They would stay.

The last distant rumbles of thunder fell silent. Second looked up and watched as the blizzard began to dissipate.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187112479342/antarctica). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


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